“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” has just destroyed America’s top ranked public high school.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) in Fairfax County, Virginia was ranked for years as the best in America…until they nixed standardized tests and began admitting students based on victimhood status.
Now, the school has fallen to 14th place in the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings cited by the Fairfax County Times. This recently pushed its woke principal, Ann Bonitatibus out of her job. But as a consolation prize, Fairfax County’s public school district rewarded her with a “promotion” to their Human Resources department as “Executive Director of Talent Acquisition and Management.”
Bonitatibus plagued her tenure as school principal by prioritizing “equal outcomes” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” over “merit-based standards,” according to the Fairfax County Times. This includes a new admission’s policy that reportedly treats a 3.5 point GPA the same as a 4.0 GPA and replaces standardized testing with a “holistic” review of an incoming freshman's achievements.
Despite complaints and even a lawsuit that charged the school with discriminating against Asian students, TJHSST insists their admission’s policy is “race neutral.”
In fact, they’ve used that phrase repeatedly in order to tiptoe around the civil rights protections of Title IV. Instead of outright listing someone’s identity as a factor of acceptance, TJHSST states they factor in socio-economic status, and reserve spots for special ed and non-English speaking students.
Asra Nomani, a former TJHSST parent and first-generation American, called “the decline” of the school “emblematic of the dumbing down of America by activist school boards and administrators,” in an interview with the Daily Mail. She charged the school with “weaponizing the once well-intended concept of ‘equity’ to destroy academic excellence, merit and the American Dream.”
“It hurts the county. It hurts the reputation of the county. It hurts the county as a place that attracts people to move here.” added another former TJHSST parent in an interview with Fairfax County Times.
But in a very defensive statement to the newspaper, a spokesperson for the school district insists the link to their DEI policies and academic failure is all just a “fabrication.”
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